The Celestial Snow Globe | The Claridge’s Christmas Tree 2021

26-11-2021

London, November 24th 2021 – Claridge’s, London’s legendary Mayfair hotel has unveiled Claridge’s Christmas Tree 2021 in the hotel lobby, created by Kim Jones, Artistic Director of the Dior men’s collections.

Every year we write about the Claridge’s Christmas Tree, because we simply love the idea! Creating buzz and free publicity together! We loved the decorations by McQueens Flowers, Christian Louboutin and Karl Lagerfeld for example. Last week the Pulitzer hotel announced that their Christmas Tree will be decorated by Claes Iversen, and this tree will be ready in the beginning of December. As said: this idea can be used at every level: have your lobby decorated for the Holiday Season by a local artist and create a buzz and free publicity with a great tree lighting party! cal artists in designing the annual Christmas tree.

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FRENCH IT! | Sofitel introduces series of films to express its ‘Live The French Way’

24-11-2021

As the first international luxury hotel brand to originate from France, Sofitel Hotels & Resorts is a renowned global ambassador of modern French Art de Vivre and style. Revealing an edgier and more playful expression of the brand’s Live The French Way ethos, Sofitel is launching FRENCH IT!, a global digital campaign of six stylish short films that spotlight the brand’s passion for arts and culture by bringing the whimsy of the French language to life.

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Opening of Brasserie Bruis in Haarlem

29-10-2021

Disclaimer: directed more towards Dutchies. But if you’re living in the vicinity of Haarlem this might be a brasserie you have to visit!

Opening – Chef-owner Jozua Jaring and maître Bas Averdijk of Michelin star restaurant Ratatouille Food & Wine in Haarlem will open their Brasserie Bruis in Haarlem on November 3, 2021. The brasserie is located at Lange Veerstraat 15, where the Petossi restaurant used to be. Bruis is an informal brasserie where guests can enjoy high-quality international brasserie dishes, a snack and a good glass of wine.

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Bucuti & Tara Beach Resort | Caribbean’s only CO2-neutral hotel shares framework for sustainable holidays

28-10-2021

It’s been 29 years since the world-famous UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Ewald Biemans, owner/CEO of Bucuti & Tara Beach Resort in Aruba, is still as inspired as the day he heard the call to action made to the world at that conference. As an passionate news follower, Biemans read and watched all the coverage he could find about the summit in 1992 on the tiny island of Aruba. The conference, which he described as ‘a wake-up call’, accelerated his efforts to what has been awarded the Caribbean’s most ecologically and first CO2-neutral hotel since 2018 and eventually led to an award from the United Nations in 2020: the prestigious Global UN 2020 Climate Action Award for Climate Neutral Now.

This year, Ewald Biemans has been invited to be one of speakers at the 26th annual UN climate conference – the Conference of the Parties or COP26 – which will take place from 1 to 12 November 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland and is expected to attract 30,000 attendees. COP26 is considered the world’s most important climate change conference in the race to keep the temperature rise within 1.5°C as mentioned in the 2015 Paris agreement. The importance grows with just nine years to go before the ecological consequences would be catastrophic and irreversible.

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Trends we spotted | Week 43

26-10-2021

At horecatrends.com or hospitalitytrends.eu we spot many national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write about, the other trends we use in our weekly column ‘Trends we spotted this week’.

With this week links to articles about… ‘The Great Feast’ in The Old Selfridges Hotel in London and Dole suggest carving a pineapple instead of a pumpkin for Halloween. 😉  With a downloadable pineapple Jack-O’-Lantern carving template!

REEF has a great view on redesigning urban spaces in communities hubs and REEF Kitchens uses a unique real estate strategy to its advantage. They opened the first two ghosts kitchens of Wendy’s in the UK. Furthermore, they will open 700 ghost kitchens in the USA, Canada and the UK.  

And some sustainable inspiration for sustainable building: the De Halo building in San Francisco made of Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) and the HAUT building in Amsterdam. And a link to an sustainable fabric for carpets and flooring: Econyl. Just as strong as nylon and made of recycled waste.

A design graduate from the Eindhoven Design Academy in the Netherlands, has created a project to highlight how renewable energy derived from tomato vines could be used to run a cloud server. And a link to an article about artfully Cannabis-infused confections.

In the Netherlands, women’s average gross hourly earnings are 14% lower than men’s, which seemed entirely outdated to De Koffiejongens. So they ask men to voluntarily pay more… And the Franz Fisher ‘Alpenhütte’ in Austria is the first mountain restaurant to serve vegan-vegetarian dishes only.

We spotted a new chain in the USA: The Sweet Paris Creperie & Café with cafes in Houston and one in Mexico opens new locations in Miami.

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Ruby Hotels | This hotel chain continues to expand, now also to Italy

22-10-2021

The Munich-based Ruby Group continues its growth and brings their Lean Luxury philosophy to Italy. In a historic building in the heart of Florence, Ruby, together with GB Holding Group, is realizing a Ruby Hotel with 118 rooms and a Ruby Workspace with a total surface area of approximately 300 m². The images accompanying this article are from Ruby Hotel Louise in Frankfurt. The rooms are the same at all Ruby Hotels, only they can differ in details regarding decoration. Ruby does the design for all her hotels herself, every hotel has the Ruby ‘signature’ but the theme differs, often in line with the history of the building or the location.

Ruby Hotels currently has 12 hotels in Düsseldorf (3), Vienna (3), Frankfurt, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, Zurich and London. Founder and CEO Michael Struck is breaking new ground in the hotel industry with his Lean Luxury philosophy. Through a lean organizational structure and with a concentration on the essentials, Ruby hotels know how to create a contemporary, affordable form of luxury for modern, cost- and style-conscious customers. The group was founded in 2013 and, in addition to the 12 hotels, has nineteen more hotels under construction and/or in the planning stages. With the Ruby Asia joint venture, founded in 2018, Ruby is expanding into Asia. In addition, Ruby offers Ruby Workspaces in Munich, Hamburg and Düsseldorf: perfectly equipped workplaces in a creative environment with access to an inspiring office community.

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Thai’s Streetfood restaurant Pitaya opens in Antwerp

21-10-2021

Thai’s Streetfood restaurant Pitaya, the restaurant chain specialized in Thai cuisine, opened its first restaurant in Antwerp, next to Operaplein in the newly renovated Antwerp Tower. After three successful openings in Brussels and Wallonia, it is now Flanders’ turn. And they will open in the Netherlands as well in the coming years.

Inspired by the Thai capital, the first Pitaya restaurant opened in 2010 in Bordeaux, France. The Antwerp restaurant is number 122 on their list! Most of the restaurants are located in France. Alpha Seed, the investment company that manages Pitaya’s license for the Benelux, is planning further openings in Liège and Charleroi this year. Pitaya now manages 5 restaurants in Belgium. The goal is to reach 70 in the Benelux in 7 years: 30 restaurants in Belgium, 35 in the Netherlands and 5 in Luxembourg.

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Trends we spotted | Week 41

12-10-2021

At horecatrends.com or hospitalitytrends.eu we spot many national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write about, the other trends we use in our weekly column ‘Trends we spotted this week’.

With this week amongst others, links to articles about the expansion of Paris based restaurant Cala, they use robotica to create fresh pasta dishes. And supermarket Jumbo in the Netherlands designates 200 cash registers for ‘checkout chats’ or as they call them ‘kletskassa’s’.

In their stories Starbucks re-announced their global ‘Starbucks Greener Stores’ commitment and McDonald’s announced that they will accelerate climate actions to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Promising is the affiliation with organizations as the United Nations (McDonald’s) and the SCS Global Services and World Wildlife Fund by Starbucks.

Accor & Ennismore announced a joint venture in which both chains contribute their added value. The joint venture will make Ennismore the largest and fastest growing lifestyle hospitality company.

A great initiative by 3 French companies: the Citroën Skate. Citroën created 3 new service pods with Accor and JCDecaux: Sofitel En Voyage, Pullman Power Fitness and JCDecaux City Provider.

Grey Poupon, the mustard brand created a limited edition La Moutarde Vin. A viognier wine infused with mustard seeds, would you like to try it?

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International Coffee Day: Looking back at our coffee related articles

1-10-2021

Today is International Coffee Day. As inspiration for this fun day, we look back at articles that Horecatrends has published in recent years with the main topic, you guessed it; coffee. You’ll see articles about a matte black latte macchiato, historical coffees, clear coffee, edible coffee, peanut coffee and more special coffee trends/companies.

Get your cup of coffee, read along and look back at fun, unique, special coffee-related articles. Most of the titles down below of the articles are clickable so you get redirected to the original post, a few are not, this is because these articles are only published in Dutch so we just wrote a short summary of the post so you still get what it was all about.

Reading time: 4 minutes

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Back to live, back to reality | The Best Chef Awards

10-9-2021

The fifth edition of The Best Chef Awards will take place in Amsterdam on 13, 14 and 15 September. Its a gastronomic ceremony where the top 100 chefs worldwide are announced. During these three days, various culinary events will take place in and around the capital between (inter)national top chefs and well-known restaurants.

Including the following events: Food Meets Science, Food and Space, AREA Talks and of course The Awards Gala on September 15th. And on September 15, the Four Hands Lunch Jansz. x Manu Buffara will take place in restaurant Jansz of the Pulitzer Hotel.

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